How would Christians in America respond to this- really? June 8, 2007
Posted by reformedville in : Government , add a commentI have upset many Christians in the past month because of ‘having the audacity to question’ the job performance of the President and to hold him to account for failure to fulfill his oath of office. I also have questioned whether todays Christian merely blindly accepts the political platform and policies of being that of God Himself.
Many of these were the same people who wanted President Clinton impeached for every offense imaginable, yet when I ask should we hold Bush to account it is if I become a pariah.
This scares me, because with the church in lockstep with the state, we have lost the ability as Christians to question our government, not only receiving heat from the world and political affiliates, but also from the church. I believe this marriage has weakened our ability to even clearly see events as they unfold and to tar and feather those who question the official versions we receive as explanations of the events.
This morning while reading this article my first thought was, Christians would slay any Christian who even suggested that there was any credejnce to this and accuse them of being a wild eyed commie or conspiracy nutjob . Would the church support a war under these circumstances and term it just?Has the church unwittingly become a tool used by the state to justify it’s action in the name of destiny and in the name of God?
Could al Qaeda Attack Trigger War With Iran? Analysis by Gareth Porter*
WASHINGTON, Jun 8 (IPS) - Following revelations of a George W. Bush administration policy to hold Iran responsible for any al Qaeda attack on the U.S. that could be portrayed as planned on Iranian soil, former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinksi warned last week that Washington might use such an incident as a pretext to bomb Iran. Brzezinski, the national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 through 1980 and the most senior Democratic Party figure on national security policy, told a private meeting sponsored by the non-partisan Committee for the Republic in Washington May 30 that an al Qaeda terrorist attack in the United States intended to provoke war between the U.S. and Iran was a possibility that must be taken seriously, and that the Bush administration might accuse Iran of responsibility for such an attack and use it to justify carrying out an attack on Iran. Brzezinski suggested that new constraints were needed on presidential war powers to reduce the risk of a war against Iran based on such a false pretense. Such constraints, Brzezinski said, should not prevent the president from using force in response to an attack on the United States, but should make it more difficult to carry out an attack without an adequate justification.Brzezinski’s warning came after Fox News’ chief Washington correspondent Jim Angle reported on “Special Report with Brit Hume” May 14 that, according to unnamed U.S. official sources, U.S. officials had urged Iran in two face to face meetings to deport the terrorists to their countries of origin, told them about al Qaeda efforts to get a nuclear device, and “warned that if any terrorist attack against Americans were to come from Iranian territory, it would be held responsible.”
Angle quoted a former official as saying that Iran “understood how bad it would be…if there were another terrorist attack and it was learned it had been planned in Iran.”
Former Central Intelligence Agency director George Tenet wrote in his recently-published memoirs that U.S. intelligence had learned by early 2003 that a senior al Qaeda operative who had been detained in Iran was in charge of the organisation’s efforts to obtain nuclear weapons. Tenet said that information was passed on to Iranian officials “in the hope that they would recognise our common interest in preventing any attack against U.S. interests.”
The Bush administration has made persistent claims over the past five years that Iran has harboured al Qaeda operatives who had fled from Afghanistan and that they had participated in planning terrorist actions — claims that were not supported by intelligence analysts.
Pentagon officials leaked information to CBS in May 2003 that they had “evidence” that al Qaeda leaders who had found “safe haven” in Iran had planned and directed terrorist operations in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. Then Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld also encouraged that inference when he declared on May 29, 2003 that Iran had “permitted senior al Qaeda officials to operate in their country.”
The leak and public statement allowed the media and their audiences to infer that the “safe haven” had been deliberately provided by Iranian authorities.
But most U.S. intelligence analysts specialising on the Persian Gulf believed the al Qaeda officials in Iran who were still communicating with operatives elsewhere were in hiding rather than under arrest. Former national intelligence officer for Near East and South Asia Paul Pillar told IPS in an interview last year that the “general impression” was that the al Qaeda operatives were not in Iran with the complicity of the Iranian authorities.
Former CIA analysts Ken Pollock, who was a Persian Gulf specialist on the National Security Council staff in 2001, wrote in “The Persian Puzzle”, “These al Qaeda leaders apparently were operating in eastern Iran, which is a bit like the Wild West.” He added, pointedly, “It was not as if these al-Qaeda leaders had been under lock and key in Evin prison in Tehran and were allowed to make phone calls to set up the attacks.”
Although most elements in the Bush administration appear to oppose military action against Iran, Vice President Dick Cheney has reportedly advocated that course. He has also continued to raise the issue of al Qaeda officials in Iran.
Cheney told Fox News in an interview May 14, “We are confident that there are a number of senior al Qaeda officials in Iran, that they’ve been there since the spring of 2003. About the time that we launched operations into Iraq, the Iranians rounded up a number of al Qaeda individuals and placed them under house arrest.”
Cheney did not say that the al Qaeda officials who were communicating with other operatives outside Iran were under house arrest.
As recently as last February, Bush administration officials were preparing to accuse Tehran publicly of cooperating with and harbouring al Qaeda suspects as part of the administration’s strategy for pushing for stronger U.N. sanctions against Iran. The strategy of portraying Iran as having links with al Qaeda was being pushed by an unidentified Bush adviser who had been “instrumental in coming up with a more confrontational U.S. approach to Iran,” according a report by the Washington Post’s Dafna Linzer on Feb. 10.
As Linzer revealed, the neoconservative faction in the administration was still pushing to link Iran with al Qaeda despite the fact that a CIA report in early February had reported the arrest by Iranian authorities of two more al Qaeda operatives trying to make their way through Iran from Pakistan to Iraq.
The danger of an al Qaeda effort to disguise an attack on the U.S. as coming from Iran was raised in an article in Foreign Affairs published in late April by former NSC adviser and counterterrorism expert Bruce Reidel.
In the article, Reidel wrote that Osama bin Laden may have plans for “triggering an all-out war between the United States and Iran,” referring to evidence that al Qaeda in Iraq now considers Iranian influence in Iraq “an even greater problem than the U.S. occupation”.
“The biggest danger,” Reidel wrote, “is that al Qaeda will deliberately provoke a war with a ‘false-flag’ operation, say, a terrorist attack carried out in a way that would make it appear as though it were Iran’s doing.”
In a briefing for reporters about the article, Reidel said al Qaeda officals have “openly talked about the advisability of getting their two great enemies to go to war with each other”, hoping that they would “take each other out”.
Reidel, now a senior fellow with the Saban Centre for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, was one of the leading specialists on al Qaeda and terrorism, having served in the 1990s as national intelligence officer, assistant secretary of defence and NSC specialist for Near East and South Asia up to January 2002.
Supporting the warnings by Brzezinski and Reidel about an al Qaeda “false flag” terrorist attack is a captured al Qaeda document found in a hideout of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq in 2006. The document, translated and released by the Iraqi National Security Adviser Mouwafek al-Rubaie, said “the best solution in order to get out of this crisis is to involve the U.S. forces in waging a war against another country or any hostile groups”.
The document, the author of which was not specified, explained, “We mean specifically attempting to escalate tension between America and Iran, and America and the Shiite[s] in Iraq.”
*Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. His latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, was published in June 2005.
(*The story moved on Jun. 5, 2007 incorrectly characterised a statement in former CIA Director George Tenet’s memoirs.) (FIN/2007)
Pietistic vs. Cultural Solutions in Education June 6, 2007
Posted by reformedville in : culture , add a commentIs homeschooling the best alternative that Christians can bring to our culture as a solution to our failing education system?
Before I proceed further, let me say what this post is not-it is not a bashing on people who have pulled their children out of government schools for whatever reason, to take responsibility for their children education. Hats off to you for taking on the responsibility and I will NEVER denigrate you for that. Even if we had the best godly schools available and a parent through their own convictions wishes to educate their children I believe you have a God given right to do so.
Now to the core of the post: Over the past few decades we have seen public education denigrate to the point where almost all parties agree it is a failure. Even worse, we all are being overburdened in both local and federal taxes to provide a public education system that is producing a end product (generally) that is lower than the other industrialized nations in the world, and yet this is a society, when polled that calls itself “Christian”. Yet while all the polls bear out the tagging of “Christian” in society we have godless, failing government schools.
As the schools have denigrated, Christians parents have pulled their children out of the public education system in record numbers, and in fact now charter schools, online cyber schools and other alternatives are being offered to offset this trend. In the 1800’s , a dominant aspect of Christian influence on America was the interest and energy it displayed toward the external world and society. They believed in the cultural mandate and applied it to their daily lives. There was no false dichotomy on secular and religious, or reductionism of Christianity.
But as personal piety took hold of protestantism, Christians began to abandon the cultural mandate and pursue their development of their own spiritual life, almost exclusively. Although borne as a renewal movement it quickly denigrated into personal religiosity, a “privatized religion”. Christianity can not neglect personal commitment and the spiritual life of the individual mind you, nor can it neglect the culture it is in, otherwise it devolves into “the inner life alone”. No it must be both. The inward redemption must outflow and affect the temporal world. Thus the reference of salt and light .
In fairness, even the early pietist’s were social reformers and activists, however, the later wave turned inward and started to separate the world into secular and spiritual , including politics, the arts and science and education eventually.. By withdrawing into the personal realm they opened these to be dominated by hose with non-Christian views. Pietism in modern form stresses only personal salvation and the experience and in many aspects of evangelicalism has devolved into a mere form of Platoism, the belief that somehow the spiritual world is somehow superior to the physical-temporal world we were placed in by God to have an effect on culture. This worldview has created an unbiblical dichotomy between the spiritual and temporal world.
So while I support parents who wish to educate their children as Christians where are we offering a better alternative to society in education. Sure we have “Christian” schools, and again-good. But what about the culture we reside in and the people who are growing up with a humanistic indoctrination and getting a poor education? Let’s take it out a couple steps further. What about the Christian who wants to homeschool their child and doesn’t have the acumen? What about the two parents who work and can not educate their children? Sure I know all the reasons why they shouldn’t, but I am speaking of dealing with our realities of our culture and being salt, instead of being savorless and of no benefit.
Being that we have always been revolutionary in our thought, not conforming to the world but being a source of transformation , are we as Christians willing to accept the status quo and roll over and play dead or are we concerned enough about our Kingdom purpose we were place here to fulfill to use our heads for more than hat racks and try to proffer some solutions? Are we willing to be agents of change to help transform our culture or have we given up?
In a capitalistic society, the most cost effective solutions with the best desired end product tend to be the ones that thrive and succeed. Right now we are paying top dollar for an education system that is leaving most children behind and it seems it is more about the teachers and what they are compensate than what the children receive. Throw all the bucks you want at it, compared to private education they fall behind. Charter schools and online schools are fast taking grip in the public sector and are atypically less to run and turn out a better education. Should Christians be focusing on a way where we can offer corporate alternatives to the public school system, almost leaving the government with no choice but to abandon the public education system as it is today?
Can you think of any alternatives? Or should we just abandon the system and leave the world to themselves and take care of our own?
Communists, Islamic, religious and humanistic people all realize that the most effective way to change a culture is through their education, give them a generation and they will transform culture. As Christians are we still willing to fight for the culture or are we just waiting for the next one to come along, or to retreat , or for the rapture?
What say you? Do you see any other potential solutions? Do you think we need to be both looking for and providing solutions?
he took a rope and beat the snot out of ‘em June 6, 2007
Posted by reformedville in : culture, Theology , add a comment“Here’s something we do know about Jesus. When confronted with people using the temple to make a profit, he took a rope and beat the snot out of ‘em and ran them off. Seems He was pretty serious about people not using God’s house or name for worldly means. So what is it exactly that these fake pastors are doing? They’re taking union money to use Jesus’ name in an attempt to force Wal-Mart to unionize so the unions can then force Wal-Mart employees to pay the union dues.
Y’know I don’t know whether Jesus would shop at Wal-Mart or not, but what I have a good idea what He’d do to these fake religious leaders using Christianity for their own, personal gain. My guess is He’d be smacking them upside the head with a stout rope”- Danny Carlton